Part 30 (1/2)
Grumbling that they were cheated from Selah's touch, the chosen infected few stood around for a moment, looking lost. One infected guard, whom Dejah recognized from the food delivery detail, placed his oozing boil-ridden hand on the doork.n.o.b, but was hesitant to leave. They wanted Selah's touch. They gazed longingly at the child.
”Get out,” Bal Shem growled. His voice was low, guttural, evil. He balled his fists tightly, his body shaking as if he were on the verge of losing control.
The others filed from the room. Their boots clanged on the metal stairs. The last one slammed the door closed and shook the trailer. Dejah rocked her cage, pus.h.i.+ng against the opening. It was wired shut.
”Mommy!” Selah screamed, terrified.
Bal Shem's body shuddered with rage as Dejah shook the cage again. ”Stop it,” he roared, his face a twisted puzzle of decaying flesh. Menace gathered around him like poison mist.
”Let me out, d.a.m.n you!” Dejah rocked the cage to one side. It almost tipped over. Bal Shem kicked it back into position.
”Mommy,” Selah continued to wail.
”Silence!” Bal Shem commanded. Selah recoiled into a corner, whimpering and sobbing.
”Let me the h.e.l.l out of here.” Dejah found strength in her anger, courage in her rage. ”d.a.m.n you! Let me out!”
He reached a diseased hand toward her through the wire cage. Flesh hung in rotting strips from his bones. His body was failing him despite the constant renewal from Selah. The virus was potent. Selah could heal cancer that was killing Reverend Forbes, but against this virus all she could do was stave it off, buy some time for these monstrosities. Touching Selah was like popping a pill: they got just enough energy and renewal from her to continue living in their diseased state, but not enough to be completely healed before her affect on them wore off.
Dejah could tell Selah's powers were weakening, too, and that could have been part of it. Her poor sweet girl was exhausted, pushed to her absolute limit by these fiends. Bal Shem already confessed that his body had begun a rapid deterioration. They're using her too much, she thought. Dejah looked at her daughter, a waif, a mere shadow of the beautiful girl who'd left home with her father what seemed so long ago.
Bal Shem was killing her. Draining her last drops of life.
Dejah kicked, rocked, banged, and shook her cage like a wild woman. Bal Shem laughed as his hands flailed around in the cage, trying to latch onto her throat or hair.
Dejah pressed against the distant side of the cage to avoid his clutches, slipped her hand into her jean pocket, and pulled out the whistle Brooks had given her.
With all of the strength she could muster, she blew the whistle.
CHAPTER 43.
”I say we go in,” David said, eyeing the back door to the trailer. ”There hasn't been anyone at that door, or even looking through that back window all night. I've got to go. I can't take this anymore. Something's wrong.”
”The plan is: we wait for the whistle,” Robbins said.
”d.a.m.n it, it's been too long. What if she lost the whistle? Maybe Bal Shem found it, or G.o.d forbid something worse happened. We've got to do something. We can't let her-”
”Ssh. What was that?” Robbins smacked David in the chest and he shut up.
The loud, shrill sound of a whistle sliced the damp morning air.
”That was it.”
”Let's go!”
David led the charge as he and Robbins dashed from the secondary barn toward the back door of the trailer.
Abbott had been watching throughout the night. He'd had a chance to mull over his decision to join the military last year. It was lauded by his father (”Now, you're a man, son,” and he'd patted his back and blew cigar smoke into his face, sauntering off to claw another beer out of the fridge), and decried by his mother (”Abe, d.a.m.n it do something, not our boy”, and to Dad's deaf ears she'd cried all night about how they'd s.h.i.+p him off to Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Iraqistan or some G.o.d awful place and they'd never see him again). He didn't regret it, now. It was all that had kept him alive.
”Here's to you, Dad,” he muttered, and pulled the last bit of a mostly-smoked cigar stub out of his pocket. He cooked the black end with his lighter. Smoke puffed fragrantly into the morning air. He had just taken his third deep puff when he gazed across the mist-laden encampment and saw the doctor and David Murphy das.h.i.+ng to the trailer. Listening, he could hear the faint sound of the whistle. He stood.
”It's time to rock and roll!” he shouted.
The group they'd a.s.sembled, no more than a dozen willing volunteers, stood as a ramshackle squad of unlikely heroes. They brandished makes.h.i.+ft weapons. Some of them prayed. Some of them seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. A couple of them just stared at the back of the door, ready to rush out. Abbott wished he had some words of encouragement for them, but the fact that they stood here with him at this moment said more than he could have expressed with words. Unlike the rest of the barn's inhabitants, cowering in the shadows and the loft, these men and women were willing to fight for their lives.
Abbott looked over and saw Torri, a broken pitchfork in her hand, rocking just slightly with nervous energy. She caught him looking and gave him a strained smile. He nodded back.
It was time.
”On three,” he said. ”One-”
The group tensed.
”-two-”
They gripped their weapons and put shoulders and backs against the doors.
”-three!”
They heaved against the barn doors. The air exploded with shouts and war cries as they battered through. The first door swung free. It creaked on its hinges and swung like a ma.s.sive hanger bay door. Two infected guards stood at their posts, turning slowly, stunned and confused. Their group attacked the infected guards in a surging wave of brutality.
Abbott saw Brooks separate from the group. It was time for them to make their run.
”Are you ready?” Brooks yelled at him.
Abbott was about to yell affirmative to his buddy when he spotted two feral zombies running around the back of the barn behind the group. Their mob of freedom fighters was intent on beating down the guards. The feral zombies would catch them unaware, and those snarling fiends looked worse off than most. Patches of flesh had opened in sores and then dried, leaving wide open wounds through which muscle and sinew shone like jerky. Their eyes had sunken into their heads, hair mostly fallen out, what remained clung to their mottled skulls in patches. The fastest of the pair came around the back of the barn and attacked like a diving hawk.
It leapt on Torri's back and pulled her splas.h.i.+ng back into the mud.
Abbott yelled and ran for her. She struggled, half-rolled, realizing what had happened. The broken pitchfork was still in her hand, but she couldn't adjust it to an effective angle. The feral zombie opened its jaws wide. It clutched her head in its rotted hands. Torri screamed one last time before it twisted her head around, bone crunching over bone. Abbott knew he'd be too late, but he ran anyway.
Gluey saliva stretched between the feral zombie's jaws as it bit down on top of her head. Its teeth lodged in skin, dug into the skull. It jerked her head in its mouth, like a crazed prize-winner bobbing for apples. She screamed. The sound of her neck snapping was like gravel crunching under a boot.
Abbott ran and launched a powerful kick at the thing.
All the bones of the zombie's midsection snapped. It arched away from Torri's limp body, flopping on its side and twitching. Abbott looked down at Torri's face beneath him. Her lifeless eyes stared heavenward, the lower half of the bite made a half-crescent above her left eye. The front of her skull was cracked open like a porcelain doll.
”Jesus,” he said. And it wasn't a curse. It was plea.
As he looked up, a few members of the group had taken on the second feral zombie. A third was coming around the barn to join the fray. It lurched toward them like an emaciated Frankenstein's monster, arms out, hands grasping toward them.
”Abbott,” Brooks yelled for him. ”We've got to do this, now!”
Abbott gripped his lighter in his pocket and rushed to the fuel shed along with Brooks and another man. Gas was stored there for the emergency generators, but they had a more pressing use for it.